Hollande’s First Official Visit to Morocco: #FAIL

Image taken from Moroccan state media and posted on Facebook.

It’s only the first day of French president, François Hollande’s visit to Morocco and what a media failure it’s been! First, his former budget minister is exposed in a major fraud scandal revealing that he held an offshore account. Instead of admitting to it at first, he denied, then recanted, which just made things worse. So now, of course, the French media and political scene is focused entirely on this scandal. While I was watching France24 this morning, all they were talking about was anticipating Hollande’s remarks in Morocco regarding the scandal, nothing about the visit. All this, while footage of King Mohammed VI greeting Hollande at the Casablanca airport streamed on constant loop, with le petit prince Hassan trotting behind the two heads of state. The only remark the news coverage made about Hollande’s visit to Morocco that was not associated with the political scandal was the thirty agreements between French and Moroccan companies were made. What kind of agreements? Which companies? Who knows.

To make the visit even more of a media fail, the visit was prefaced with statements from both Human Rights Watch and Reporters Without Borders urging Hollande to address and pressure the Moroccan government on its human rights abuses and violations on press freedom.

Even if the Moroccan regime wanted to use this visit as an opportunity for positive media coverage, the only place that’s going to happen is on Moroccan state media where the regime already controls every headline. On the other hand, French media is preoccupied with the scandal at home, and Moroccan independent media is echoing the calls of HRW and RSF to call the regime out on its ongoing violations.

And to top it all off, the scenes of the king and his crew welcoming Hollande are beyond archaic. I really can’t get over Hassan following them from behind. I wish someone could reproduce the footage of him following the king and Hollande while dubbing it with a presumed narration of his thoughts.

Mourning the Moroccan Left

While in Rabat recently, we passed the Socialist Union of Popular Forces (USFP) headquarters in Rabat and it’s always a sad moment. A token of the monarchy’s grip on power and its ability to co-opt what could have been. Alas, Cold War politics kinda ruined things for the Moroccan left…like it did in many other places.

When neoliberalism, patriarchy and authoritarianism collide

“Fadoua Laroui, everyone burns with their silence.” Image via Global Voices.

Below is an excerpt from my recent op-ed piece, published on Al Jazeera English:

Fadoua Laroui’s self-immolation spread a wave of solidarity among Moroccans during a time of early mobilisation efforts for the beginning of the February 20 Movement. Fadoua Laroui was a single mother whose application for public housing was rejected in what was believed to be due to her marital status. Her self-immolation in front of her local municipal office was captured on video and shared widely on social media. In reaction to her self-immolation, Moroccan-American novelist, Laila Lalami, called her the “Moroccan Mohamed Bouazizi“.

The political and economic context surrounding her self-immolation is two-fold. Firstly, her self-immolation deliberately took place in the front gates of her local municipal office, an extension of the authoritarian regime’s hegemony. Secondly, her socioeconomic conditions that initially placed her in a position to demand public housing stem from years of top-down neoliberal economic policies. These policies made way for the king and his allies’ vast amassment of personal wealth at the expense of a majority of Moroccans, following the privatisation of Morocco’s state-owned enterprises. Forbes placed the king’s wealth at around $2.5 billion in a country where the Gross National Income per capita is $4,910.

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